


hello from the other side

by slayerette (candycity)



Series: hello [2]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: X & Y | Pokemon X & Y Versions
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 16:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5382695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candycity/pseuds/slayerette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And he's scared, all right - he's scared of hurting her, scared that she'll hate him, that she'll leave - </p><p><i>God,</i> he's such a coward.</p><p>[Calem/Serena, Pokémon XY universe.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	hello from the other side

**Author's Note:**

> The second installment of the _hello_ series, written from Calem's point of view. 
> 
> This fandom is dead and I don't care.

Divorce changes everything. 

He remembers, even now, almost thirteen years later - he'd just turned three, he'd had his birthday party just a few days ago, his mother had baked him a cake from scratch and his father had given him his very first Pokémon - a Fletchling, a fluffy little orange thing with tiny wings that looked as though they had been dipped in white paint. 

He remembers how everything changed, too - practically overnight, it'd seemed, his father had packed his bags and left, his mother turned reclusive and sullen, the once-bright apartment became a jail cell - curtains drawn, tables gathering dust, photographs gathered and set on fire. 

He remembers watching the thin wisps of smoke, lazy and graceful, curling into blue sky, and thinking _oh, how pretty._

*

He's sixteen when his mother packs up their clothing and kitchen utensils, announces that they're leaving Hoenn for good.

They don't take the furniture - it's not worth the trouble, his mother says - and as they drive away, Calem gazes at the cold, grey apartment until it vanishes into the horizon. 

This time I'm going to make it work, he thinks, with a determination that grips his chest like claws of steel. I will, I swear I will. 

_I won't end up like they did._

Vaniville is fresh and sweet, a lovely little town with a small number of large, beautiful houses and wildflowers growing at every corner. There's a perpetual aroma of freshly mown grass and baking cookies, and Calem couldn't think of a place further than hard, cold, grey Rustboro. 

At first he dares to hope that it'll turn his mother back into who she used to be. But then the smiling girl from next-door comes over with a plate of cookies and his mother slams the door in her face, and any hope he has drains away. 

It's easier, though, to escape in Vaniville - Rustboro was a metropolis of concrete and high-rise buildings, streets lined with weary office workers, the Gym shunted over to a young scholar who knew nothing of Pokémon outside theories and research papers. 

Vaniville is surrounded by nature, patches of wilderness just past the town gates. There's no Pokémart in the town, and it's only too easy to explore the tall grass under the pretense of making grocery runs over at Santalune. 

It's during one of those excursions that he meets his next-door neighbour for the first time. She's decidedly less smiley this time, her hair in shiny golden waves, and dressed in a white blouse with a red, pleated skirt. 

She's pretty, he's willing to admit, but the first words that come out of her mouth drip with derision. 

"You should be careful," she says, "there are wild Pokémon out here."

"I know," he tells her. "Isn't that the fun of it, though?" 

He grins at the pretty, poised girl in front of him, and her perfect brows rise with challenge. 

"What's your name?" she asks abruptly. He blinks. 

"Calem," he says, "Calem Grace."

"I'm Serena," she informs him. "Get out of that grass, you'll get hurt. You haven't been around town yet, have you?"

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and smiles, her eyes alight with arrogance and challenge, and Calem thinks it's the first time he's seen anyone so bright in a long, long time. 

( He thinks that may have been when he started to fall in love with her. )

*

They make their way through Kalos together as a formidable pair - her beautiful trio of Ice Pokémon alongside his mismatched team of three. She is lovely and arrogant, kind and spoiled, and there is a brightness in her spirit that draws him in like a moth to flame.

They work so perfectly - _oh, how lovely,_ he hears everyone sigh as they walk, hand-in-hand, into cafès - but there is something in the way she seems to change whenever they're not alone - her smile becomes fixed, she smooths her hair, there's a slight sway to her hips as she walks and the pleasant Vaniville lilt disappears from her voice. 

She can't help it, he knows - the pretty manners, the delicate graciousness that's been drilled into her very being since she was a child. But he hates it, still - he hates that she treats the world as her stage, hates the mask she wears, hates the way it takes away his Serena, _his_ Serena with her bratty comebacks and careless laughter. 

But he never says anything, because he's scared, all right - he's scared of hurting her, scared that she'll hate him, that she'll leave - 

( God knows, he's had enough people leaving him in his lifetime. 

He's _such_ a coward. )

*

She tells him of her dreams, becoming a Gym Leader in Snowbelle and turning the run-down old mansion into an elegant palace. Adrenaline pumping hot through her veins in icy battlefields. Ace Trainers dressed in white and pale blue, in an intricate maze of frosted glass.

( And her, reigning over everything like the princess she's always wanted to be. Always has been, he thinks, with something that is almost like bitterness. )

He has his own dreams, though. He's never going back to his mother, he tells her - never going to spend his days stuck in a house, ever again. He's going to the Pokémon League, and then he's going travel across all six regions - Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos - and he's going to _shine._

Serena looks at him, she smiles, and it is excruciatingly beautiful and excruciatingly sad - and he thinks, his heart wrenching in his chest, that maybe it's not meant to be.

*

He makes false, pretty promises of how of course, he'll come back, and presses a light kiss on the tips of her fingers before he disappears.

( He goes first, because he can't bear for her to leave -

he just _can't._ )

*

Six years, and he's risen to glory. Just as he'd sworn to himself so long ago - he's made it, really made it, finally. League Champion, shining star of Kalos, jewel of the Pokémon world. His father tells the reporters, _I always knew he could make it, my son - Calem **Grace.**_

_I always knew he was special._

Trevor is the only one who bothers to write to him even after all this years - the small, fire-haired boy with too much intelligence shining in his clear green eyes.  
_  
Serena never talks about you anymore. Have you been keeping in contact with her?_

_Congratulations on your Johto win! Let me know if you come to Kalos, I'll treat you to dinner._

_Aren't you coming to visit? Your mother hasn't left the house in a month._

_You should visit her, sometime. The reporters were banging down her door, I think that made her worse._

_It's all right, Serena's parents are taking care of her. Apparently she left a note - mentioned that she'd been depressed, might need some help after you left -_

_She's gone to Lumiose. She's been diagnosed with chronic depression, they're talking of sending her over to Unova for rehabilitation._

_Serena visited her at the hospital, you know? It's a long way from Snowbelle, but I think she hasn't had much to do these days anyway._

_Serena quit. She's in Lumiose now._

_Talk to her, please, Calem._

_What happened to the two of you?  
_

*

"Calem! Calem, is there anyone waiting for you back home? A special girl, perhaps?"

He thinks of blue eyes that shine, with all the stars in the world. 

"No," he says, with a smile and a slight shake of his head, "no-one like that."

( He's _such_ a coward. )

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this at all, please do leave kudos or a comment, I appreciate any and all feedback so so much than you'll ever know! :)


End file.
